


Walking Down To The Underworld (It Feels A Lot Like Home)

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Dream Logic, Established Relationship, M/M, Making Food Is A Love Language, Spoilers for Episode 176
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:07:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27621808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: Zolf walks, eyes closed through… well, he’s not entirely sure where, if he’s being honest. Perhaps it’s the Ethereal Plane, that seems the most likely, though he could just be sitting in the ritual space, high on the smoke of whatever it was they had been burning in those urns, and this is all just happening in his head. Maybe both things can be true at once. He doesn’t think too hard about it, just concentrates on the feeling in his chest (yes, in his heart, of course it’s his heart) that certainty that Wilde has been here, that Zolf is walking in his footsteps, and wherever Zolf ends up, Wilde will be there as well.
Relationships: Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde
Comments: 11
Kudos: 52





	Walking Down To The Underworld (It Feels A Lot Like Home)

Zolf walks, eyes closed through… well, he’s not entirely sure where, if he’s being honest. Perhaps it’s the Ethereal Plane, that seems the most likely, though he could just be sitting in the ritual space, high on the smoke of whatever it was they had been burning in those urns, and this is all just happening in his head. Maybe both things can be true at once. He doesn’t think too hard about it, just concentrates on the feeling in his chest (yes, in his heart, of course it’s his heart) that _certainty_ that Wilde has been here, that Zolf is walking in his footsteps, and wherever Zolf ends up, Wilde will be there as well.

It’s the first raindrop hitting him that makes Zolf open his eyes. He recognizes the well worn, muddy track he’s on right away, the trees with water dripping off their branches, the inn just ahead. There’s a light in the window where Wilde has his study, but nowhere else as the raindrops turn into a proper deluge. For a moment Zolf stands blinking in the rain, looking up at the warm light coming from Wilde’s study, then shakes his head.

“Sure,” he says as he walks toward the inn. “I would have thought he’d be somewhere…. more posh, I guess, but sure.”

As soon as he crosses the threshold of the inn, several things change at once. His clothes for one, not just changing from wet to dry like the rest of him, but becoming a different outfit entirely, a heavy blue robe that he had favored on chilly days when the damp had threatened to creep into his bones. Secondly, all the lamps in the entryway light themselves.

“Wish they had done that before,” Zolf mutters as he heads towards the stairs. Lamps continue to light themselves as he goes, the light warmer and richer than Zolf remembers it being, and it seems to him that it makes the closed door of Wilde’s study glow faintly as he stands in front of it. The certainty in his heart hasn’t waned, and he swears he can hear the scratch of Wilde’s pen against paper, even through the door. Habit causes him to knock, the sound breaking the peace of the rain falling outside.

“Wilde?” Zolf calls.

The sound of pen against paper doesn’t cease, and that’s familiar enough to make Zolf huff out something that could be a fond laugh or an exasperated sigh. When the man is working, very little gets through to him. Zolf reaches for the knob and…

_“…And if Orpheus had kept his eyes fixed in front of him as he had been bid, well, then this tale would be a different tale entirely. Instead, unable to hear his wife’s footsteps and sure that at the last he had been tricked, one step away from the end of his journey, with one foot in sunlight and the other still in the shadow of the Underworld, he risked the smallest of glimpses behind him. For a moment he saw his beloved Eurydice, her face lit with the light of the sun before the shadows of the Underworld swirled around her and carried her back far below, out of his reach forever.”_

_“Idiot,” Zolf mutters against Wilde’s chest. They’re curled up together by the fire, the warmth of the flames and each other chasing away the cold of the nightmares that had driven the both of them from sleep._

_Wilde chuckles softly, running a hand through Zolf’s hair. “Are you saying you wouldn’t have looked back?”_

_“Course I wouldn’t have,” Zolf says. “Spirits don’t make any noise when they walk. I wouldn’t have turned around because of_ **_that_ ** _.”_

_Wilde full on laughs at that and leans over to kiss Zolf as the dwarf smiles against his lips. “You, Mister Smith, are the most pragmatic romantic I’ve ever met,” he says fondly. “Instead of a song you’d come down into the Underworld with a good meal and trust that the smell of your cooking would lure me out.”_

_“Gets you out of the office most of the time,” Zolf says. “Be worth a try.”_

Zolf takes his hand away from the doorknob. “Dinner’ll be ready in an hour,” he calls through the door, as if it were any other day, any other meal, as if time has any meaning here. There’s no reply, but the silence is a comfort, familiar and expected.

The kitchen of the inn looks the same as it always had, but when Zolf opens the pantry the shelves stretch to infinity, any ingredient he could ever want laid out before him. For a moment he’s paralyzed by choice, then he remembers a particular dish, a peaceful night, a shared meal, and starts grabbing ingredients. A block of fermented soybeans. Udon noodles. Garlic. Ginger. Onion. Coconut milk. Sweet potatoes. Vegetable broth. Spinach. Lime juice. Spices. He begins chopping vegetables as the oil heats in the soup pot, throws in the spices to toast and breathes in the smell, knowing that it won’t be long before the aroma makes its way up the stairs and under the door of Wilde’s study. He finds himself humming as he cuts the sweet potatoes into star shapes, waiting for the broth to come to a simmer.

“That smells _divine,”_ Wilde says from behind him.

Zolf doesn’t turn around, but his hands shake a little as he sets the knife down. “Nothing divine about it,” he says firmly as he tips the sweet potatoes and the onion into the pot.

“My apologies,” Wilde says with a chuckle.

Zolf stares into the soup pot for a moment before checking on the noodles, fishing one out with a pair of extra long chopsticks before determining that they’re cooked just enough and dumping them into a colander. “If I turn to look at you, will you disappear?”

“I don’t know.” Zolf can’t hear the rustle of cloth, just like he hadn’t heard Wilde’s footsteps, but he’s sure Wilde is running a hand over the scar on his face, if he still carries the scar even after death. “I’d say no, but…”

“Don’t want to risk it,” Zolf finishes for him as he stirs the soup, watching the bright orange sweet potato stars swirl in the broth and make their own constellations. “So, why are you _here_? Thought your afterlife would be all…” Zolf waves a hand. “Fancy, I guess. Chaise lounges and velvet drapes and— and posh things.”

“As if any of that had given me the fraction of the happiness I had here with you,” Wilde says, and Zolf feels himself blush. “And this felt like a good place to stop walking. To wait.”

“You knew I’d be coming?”

“I knew if you could, if there was any way at all, any hope, you’d find it.” Zolf can hear the soft smile in Wilde’s voice.

“You—“ Zolf throws several handfuls of spinach into the pot and gives it a few stirs before taking the pot off the heat. “So do you want to come back?”

“Do you even have to ask?”

“Yes,” Zolf says firmly, as he arranges noodles into two bowls before ladling soup on top of them. “It’s your _choice_ , Oscar.” There’s other things he could say, things that might sway Oscar one way or the other, but he doesn’t say them, just like he closes his eyes before turning around, a bowl of soup in his outstretched hands. “I’m just here to ask.”

The sounds of the rain fade, creaking rope and timber replacing them, the quiet breathing of his companions all around him. Zolf can’t bring himself to open his eyes, vaguely aware that his hands are still outstretched, cupped around nothing, hoping, _hoping_ ….

Cloth rustles and then his hands are taken by hands that he knows so well, the shape of the knuckles, the delicate fingers. There’s the brush of lips on his closed eyelids, so terribly gentle that his heart aches with it.

Oscar Wilde, warm and smiling and _alive,_ doesn’t vanish when Zolf finally opens his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't posted anything in a month, gods it feels good to be excited by writing again.
> 
> The soup Zolf makes is ginger curry noodle soup and I am *so* making it this week.
> 
> I’m [angel-ascending](http://angel-ascending.tumblr.com) over on Tumblr and [angel_in_ink](http://twitter.com/angel_in_ink) over on Twitter if y’all want to stop by and say hi!


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